


a long way

by springsoldier (ladydaredevil)



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, Other, non-binary Alma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 06:59:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7834774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladydaredevil/pseuds/springsoldier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kanda’s pretty terrible at being a barista, and even worse at romance. Good thing Alma doesn’t mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a long way

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written D.Gray-man fic since... 2009, maybe?  
> So yeah, it's been a while. But Hallow is fucking me up, so I wrote these two some fluff to make myself feel better. As fluffy as these two get given their Issues, anyway. 
> 
> Non-binary Alma because their canon situation is... kind of complicated.

Kanda was never meant to be a barista.

This is never so clear as it is early in the morning. He has nothing against getting up before dawn, himself, but the rest of the world doesn’t seem to be nearly as functional and he just doesn’t have the _patience_ to deal with any of those sleep-deprived idiots.

Which is, of course, his goddamn job.

He glares at the next customer, who's been idling in front of the menu for far too long for his tastes – that is, over ten seconds.

He clears his throat to ask them if they could, possibly, hurry the fuck up, before they turn and do an impressive double-take.

"...Yuu?" The person asks, eyes wide under their heavy makeup.

Kanda can practically feel his coworkers snapping to attention behind his back, because they could not mind their own damn business if their lives depended on it.

"Who the fuck are you?"

Except he knows. Of course he does.

He couldn't possibly forget.

They look embarrassed, and Kanda takes in the unfamiliar tattoos on their arms, the painted fingernails, the countless little changes the years have brought to their features.  And the familiar things, too, like that scar across their nose.

"It's Alma, don’t you remember?"

Kanda nods in acknowledgement, but doesn’t say anything more on the topic because – well, what else is there to say? They’ve established they recognise each other.

"So? What are you getting?"

Alma, rather than getting offended by the non-reaction, bursts into laughter.

"You sure haven't changed, Yuu!"

Kanda had forgotten about the twisty feelings in his chest whenever Alma laughed, but it seems they’ve returned with a vengeance.

"We should catch up, yeah?" Alma says, as they finally decide on some disgustingly sweet drink. “God, I can’t believe it’s been – what, eight years?”

 _And whose fault was that_ , Kanda wants to ask. But he can picture the hurt on Alma’s face far too easily, and so doesn’t say anything as he rings up the drink that Lenalee’s gotten started on.

Alma starts to say something again before they catch sight of the clock behind the counter.  

“Ah shit, I gotta go, I’ll be late!” They grab a marker from their bag, and scribble something onto a napkin. “Call me! Or – well, you probably won’t, but texting you can do, right? Or – or I’ll be back, anyway, so. Just don’t change jobs in the next week or so and I’ll see you soon!”

And just like that they’re gone, leaving Kanda to stare at the number – he can’t decide whether he wants to burn it or protect it with his life – while behind him the others burst into excited speculation.

“Your friend is a _babe_ , Yuu,” Lavi says, because he has no sense of self-preservation. “Introduce us next time.”

 _As if_. Kanda is never, ever letting those two idiots bond, because he knows for a fact they would _never shut up_.

Speaking of idiots:

“I can’t believe Kanda has a friend. Did you know, Lenalee?" Allen asks, clearly baffled by this turn of events. It doesn’t take much to baffle him, in Kanda’s informed opinion.

She shakes her head – and Lenalee’s not even _supposed_ to be here, she doesn’t work this shift, except the delivery people were late _again_ and she’s the only one who can sign off on them.

"It must've been before we knew each other."

Kanda and Lenalee met in school, where she was being bullied by bigger kids, and where he was always willing to jump into any fight that presented itself. Then she'd taken up kickboxing and had hardly needed him around anymore, but by then they'd gotten beaten up together, and that isn't the kind of bond that’s broken easily.

Lavi came much later, and Allen later still. He wouldn't call them friends so much as unavoidable annoyances. He'd probably put them out if they were on fire, but even that is debatable, in Allen's case.

They keep asking about Alma the whole day, because they’re nosy assholes, and he gets some satisfaction from telling them absolutely nothing.

 

 

Alma’s back bright and early the next day, which is unsurprising because they’ve always been incredibly persistent.

Kanda is – a little more prepared, this time around, for the blinding smiles and the old sorrow that rears its head whenever he allows himself to think of his old friend.

He expected to be angry, a little, because it’s his default state.

He’s not, it turns out. Just wary. Alma’s sunny disposition hides the fact that they have just as much of a temper as Kanda. Except they’re not children anymore, either of them, so – maybe they can have civil conversations, this time around.

Lenalee’s the only other person working and she tells him to take a long break, so he does, and so begins Kanda and Alma’s valiant attempt at catching up without stumbling on the awkward parts and jagged edges of their memories.

Alma’s swirling their straw into some abomination of a drink as they stare at him. Whatever Kanda expects to come out of their mouth though, it isn’t what does:

“Wow, you really grew up to be handsome.”

Kanda blinks.

“Do you still really just say whatever you think?”

“Ha. Most of the time. It’s true, though.”

Kanda’s distantly aware that he’s good-looking, because he’s been told so a million times, but he’s never cared much. That Alma thinks so is – interesting, he supposes. To be filed away for future reference.

He should probably say something in return, but that’s hardly his expertise, and so he changes the subject instead, asks what Alma’s been doing.

Alma is apparently in culinary school these days, which makes the horrors they’ve ordered even worse. Alma finds his skepticism funny, doesn’t take offense like they would have, before. 

 “You have so little faith, Yuu. I’ll cook for you some time, you’ll see, you’ll love it.”

He agrees to it, mostly out of spite – he’s a notoriously picky eater – and it strikes him that this isn’t a one-time thing, that Alma might actually become a regular presence in his life again. He’s wondering how to feel about this when Alma speaks again:

"I have to say, when I thought about seeing you again, I never imagined you as a barista."

Kanda grunts in acknowledgement.

“The other place doesn’t pay enough.”

Kanda derives a surprising amount of enjoyment from his other part-time job – his _real_ job – which consists in drilling basic kendo katas into children. Some of them aren’t completely awful, which is more than he can say for the café’s customers. It’s also remarkably convenient, since he’s always at the dojo anyway.

The few classes he teaches aren't enough to cover rent, though, hence the shittier job at the Black Order Café.

He's fairly certain he never would've gotten the job if it hadn't been for Lenalee's bleeding heart, as well as the fact that her brother owns the place and can never deny her anything. He has no illusions about his customer service skills. He does make passable coffee though.

Alma seems to like it, anyway, which is what matters in the grand scheme of things. That part he doesn’t say out loud.

“It’s good, that you have something you love to do” Alma says, thoughtful. “I don’t think I’m passionate about anything like that except – well, food, maybe. That’s why I’m studying.”

Tiedoll – it’s odd, having to explain who the old man is, even though he came after Alma, like everyone else – wants him to go to college. Kanda would rather shave his head than spend one more day in school. It's made family dinners somewhat difficult -- and Kanda would absolutely skip them if he thought he could get away with it, but the old man is unbearable when he's being ignored.

Kanda has never understood the old man, who’d taken in a rage-monster of a child and somehow never sent him back from whence he came like any reasonable person would’ve done. Daisya had been a troublemaker too, but keeping him in line was relatively easy as long as his place on the soccer team was on the line. Marie was really the only one of them who hadn’t been an ungrateful brat.

Kanda, though –

Kanda had anger issues that made school-mandated therapists quit in despair.

(He’d been more self-aware than people seemed to know, but life had fucked him over and he was going to take it out on anyone standing close enough.)

Then Tiedoll had signed him up for kendo lessons as a last-ditch effort to get him to channel his anger into – a more constructive activity than making his classmates eat the pavement whenever they tried to call him by his first name.

There had been the life-changing realisation that he could hit people with a sword without getting into trouble, and so he’d decided that it was the only thing he wanted to do with his life.

The household had breathed in collective relief when he’d taken up meditation.

Kanda’s not much of a storyteller, but Alma seems entranced anyway. They don’t volunteer much information about their own past, though. From what Kanda can gather, they didn’t get nearly as lucky when it came to foster families.

They bounced around a lot – Kanda thinks that maybe it’s because Alma is so sweet and helpful most of the time that when they’re _not_ it’s all the more jarring.

They’re fine now, they say with a smile. They spent the last few years with old man Zhu, who found them again by some lucky coincidence.

Things got better, they say. Kanda recognises the bitterness in their eyes though. It’s not unlike what he sees in the mirror, so he doesn’t press.

 

They meet in Alma’s shitty apartment next – though Alma keeps dropping by the café on their way to class pretty much every day – so they can prove their culinary credentials.

Kanda is genuinely surprised by how much he enjoys the meal, and says so, because he may not like admitting he's wrong about anything, but he definitely lost that bet. Alma’s so thrilled by the admission that he has to smile.  

Encouraging them turns out to be a terrible mistake though, because Alma starts bringing him lunch at work, much to his coworkers’ endless amusement. It’s embarrassing, is what it is, but it’s also a very _Alma_ thing to do, so he allows it. The food’s good, anyway.

Lenalee is fascinated, because in all the time she’s known him he’s never been so – civil to someone as he is to Alma. She’s clearly also willing and able to keep the others from asking too many questions. Possibly out of friendship, and possibly so he doesn’t stab one of them with a bread knife.

“They do say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” Lavi comments one day, as Kanda bodily prevents him from snatching up a shrimp from his bowl. 

Alma blushes wildly and Kanda thinks: _ah._

 

It’s easy, to fall back into step with each other – it’s nothing like when they were children, but it works all the same.

They don’t fight nearly as much, for one.

Alma’s becomes the place they meet the most often. They spend late nights watching excessively gory movies on Netflix and find them far funnier than they should. Gallows humour has always been something they shared, and Kanda hasn’t laughed like that since – since he was last with Alma, really. The realisation is a little sobering, but he doesn’t let himself linger on it.

It’s not that he hasn’t had friends – as much as he hates to admit it – all this time, but he and Alma are – something else.

When Kanda stays too late and the buses have stopped running, they squeeze together in Alma’s too-small bed. Kanda’s a notoriously light sleeper, and Alma snores, so it should by all means be awful. It’s not.

 

They’re still on eggshells around each other, though, because they never did talk about That Day.

Alma was – his first friend. The first person he’d met at the group home, when he’d been sent there. Alma who was loud and obnoxiously cheerful even in that hellhole of a place, even though something awful must’ve happened to their family, too, for them to end up there.

Kanda had hated them a little, for disrupting his haze of misery, but Alma was _persistent_ and there were no other children their age and so they had become Best Friends, as was the way of things.

Which didn’t mean they stopped trying to murder each other occasionally, even though the adults always threatened to split them up when they did.

 

Alma picks one quiet day at the coffee shop to initiate the heart-to-heart they’ve very carefully been avoiding:

“I wanted to apologise, for when we were kids.”

Kanda freezes halfway through cleaning the espresso machine. There’s no one else around, this time, but he still feels caught off-guard.

“That was a long time ago, dumbass.”

Alma's looking down at the drink they had Kanda put two extra pumps of chocolate in, because they’re gross.

"Yeah but – I still want to try to explain, because – because it was _bad,_ and mostly my fault – mostly.”

“It wasn’t _your_ –“

“Remember that internet girlfriend you had?"

That's not where he’d expected that conversation to go. It’s been a long time since anyone brought her up – it’s not like he ever talked about it with anyone – and if he still daydreams about finding That Person again, well, it’s not like anyone knows.

"... what about it?"

"That was me."

"What?"

He thinks he must’ve misunderstood, for a moment, because it makes no sense. Alma looks ashamed and uneasy and he really wishes they didn't.

"I didn't know, either. That it was you, I mean. I just... wanted to see what it was like to be a girl.”

Kanda nods in understanding.

 “Anyway, then I figured it out – it should’ve been obvious, really, I don’t know why it took me so long – and you liked _her_ and not _me_ and. Well, that's why I acted like that. I had the _biggest_ crush on you and you hardly gave me the time of the day, so."

Alma shrugs, cheeks flushed.

“You were my best friend.”

“Yeah, I know, but you were _nice_ to her and – well, anyway, we were kids. I was jealous.”

Kanda frowns.

“Of yourself.”

“You make it sound kind of ridiculous.”

It had seemed like the end of the world, when he’d been ten. He’d been stupidly devastated. Losing the one friend he had and That Person roughly at the same time – well, it makes more sense, now.

“I don’t care about any of that.”

Maybe he would have, a few months ago, but now?

“Really?”

“We were kids, so – it doesn’t matter anymore.”

In a fit of anger Alma had broken his nose, and Kanda had broken their arm in confused retaliation, and it had been decided that the violent escalation in their interactions meant that they were a danger to each other and to themselves.

Which had probably been true, in retrospect.

And so they’d been sent to separate facilities, and had never seen each other again.

Alma had been too ashamed to seek him out and Kanda – Kanda had honestly never even thought of it. It had been a final kind of parting.

Until Alma stumbled into the coffee shop, anyway.

 

Since Alma and Kanda remain Alma and Kanda, they have a fight, a few months in. Not the casual bickering that most of their conversations wind up being, but a _fight_. There’s no true reason for it – Kanda’s just being more of a dick than usual, and Alma’s had a bad day and isn’t feeling like putting up with his shit.

There’s screaming, and door-slamming, and empty threats.

They’re both surprised, at the end of it, that no one threw a punch.

“Shit,” Alma says, once they’ve spent all their anger. “I guess all that therapy was good for something after all.”

They throw their arms around Kanda for a long hug he doesn’t bother to try to resist.

“…Yeah.”

Kanda stays the night, and makes breakfast in the morning. Alma takes it for the apology it is, even though Kanda’s pretty useless in the kitchen.

 

Alma comes to most of his competitions, when they can get there. Kanda wins most of them. He wouldn’t say he’s winning them _for_ Alma, since he’d be winning anyway, but – it’s a consideration.

Of course that also means that Alma runs into Tiedoll and the rest of the ‘family’ sooner or later. Tiedoll is so happy to meet them that he _cries_ , because of course he does. Even Alma seems to be a little taken aback by the sheer level of enthusiasm the old man displays, and Alma’s the one who brought a glittery cardboard sign.

“I’m so glad Yuu’s finally found someone.”

“Oh – um. Thank you? It’s not – we’re not really – “

“ _So_ glad.”

Alma’s been bullied into a family dinner before they can manage to explain anything. They give Kanda a sheepish look, but he can only shrug. Resisting Tiedoll is mostly useless.

Daisya and Marie know to leave him be by now, and so he mostly avoids brotherly teasing.

Marie’s the only one who really knows what all of this means – because he’d known Alma, back then, if only briefly. When things had been bad. But he knows what Alma means to Kanda and – well, he seems happy for them, too.   

 

When Kanda has a tournament overseas Alma fusses for _days_ and checks his suitcase at least three time to make sure Kanda hasn’t forgotten anything.

He’s barely had time to set his suitcase down when his phone rings.

“You’re _so_ fucking clingy,” Kanda says, but he answers every single time.

 Alma sends him excessively detailed reports on his plants' health. Kanda's asked them to water them, and they’re taking the responsibility very seriously. It’s – cute.

 

Kanda kisses them goodbye, one morning. They’ve just had breakfast, and he doesn’t think much of it until Alma pulls back, flushing and stuttering and looking at him like he’s grown a second head.

“ _Yuu!_ ”

“What?”

“What did you do that for?!”

“I felt like it. Did you not want me to?”

“That’s not – I just – You could’ve _warned_ me!”

“I’m warning you now.”

“Why are you such a jerk oh my _God_ –“

Alma’s late to class that day, but it feels like things are falling into place.

 

The relationship they find themselves stumbling into is maybe not the most conventional:

They don’t really do dates, unless the coffee shop counts, because they have weird and often conflicting schedules. Alma studies while Kanda’s training – which would probably be more effective if Kanda stopped taking off his shirt any chance he gets – and Kanda grudgingly acts as a taste-tester.

Anything Alma makes is better than any restaurant they could afford to go to anyway.

“That may be the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Shut _up_.”

Movies they never agree on, unless it’s cheap horror, the sort of mindless blockbuster that winds up being background noise to a makeout session, or the occasional romcom – Kanda likes romances, so sue him.

Alma can’t be bothered with meditation, but will spend that time reading or napping close by, so that counts, right?

“No. No, it doesn’t, Yuu.”

They play video games, sometimes. Until Alma gets sick of being systematically destroyed and decides to distract him, anyway. Alma’s very good at distracting Kanda.

Alma buys him flowers, sometimes. Kanda would like to say it’s a waste of money, but he likes flowers. Kanda gets them a jar of mayonnaise in return. Alma laughed so hard they cried, the first time he did that, but they love that shit, so Kanda doesn't see what the problem is.

 

There’s no real reason for Alma to hang around the café so often when they see Kanda regularly in other settings now, but try telling them that.

They like Kanda’s coworkers far too much – most of the time, anyway. Alma’s kind of territorial, which Kanda should probably mind more than he does, and which Lavi found out the hard way when he’d carelessly slung an arm around Kanda’s shoulders one day. He stopped asking what ‘someone as sweet as Alma’ was doing with ‘a grump like Yuu’ after that.

Aside from that one incident, though, they all seem to like each other. This is bad, because they keep ganging up on him.

He and Alma are sitting together while Kanda’s waiting for his shift to start, and Alma says something amusing.

“Good Lord, Kanda smiled,” Allen stage-whispers from behind the counter, because he’s a fucking asshole despite the angelic facade that only Kanda seems to be able to see through. Kanda scowls at him.

Alma turns to face Allen, puzzled.

“Well of course he does.”

“Not in my experience.”

“Clearly you just don’t know how to do it. Watch:”

They clear their throat, leaning close to Kanda, who’s watching the whole thing unfold suspiciously.

“Hey, Yuu?”

“What?”

They bend closer to whisper in his ear:

“I love you.”

Kanda tries, and fails, to fight the smile tugging at his lips.

**Author's Note:**

> Also ladydaredevil on tumblr, if someone wants to come cry with about these two with me.


End file.
